Friday, July 25, 2014

Razura Issue 3

"Razura issue 3? Was there ever an issue 1 or 2 that I wasn't aware of?"

During the summer of 95 I had done two issues for GrubbMaster Graphics. When the project had stopped, I reprinted my stories as individual issues of Razura that I would give out to my friends. Before GrubbMaster Graphics was officially canceled I was already hard at work on the third issue of Razura.

My idea for the third issue was to introduce The Black Hole, a character that originally fought Imp in my first notebook comic series. In this version, Imp would be fighting The Black Hole in the sewers where he was hiding from Mr. Kill and his law enforcements. I don't know what the staff was for that Imp is finding but it seemed to be guarded by The Black Hole in the sacred sewers underneath.

Yeah, not much of a story teller there.

I had the worst time doing things to proportion or even laying out a scene. I would draw the arms and wings from edge to edge of a paper and at times I would even run out of space. These characters are only three feet in height not counting their wings. It was always trivial to me that I could never fit such tiny characters on one page. You can see how I got very lazy in this layout and I had pushed the badguy all the way into the shadows so that I wouldn't have to deal with proportions. Sadly, I didn't hide that horrendous hand of his.

After having laid out the cover and again, being quick to ink things while I was still in the penciling process, I neglected the logo being at the top. This forced me to put it at the bottom of the cover instead. This time around, you can see that I added another "mystery" element to this one dimensional story by putting weird markings on top of the doorway. The Black Hole's hand still sucks majorly as well.

In this updated version, I decided to play around a bit with the scene. I took away the door and the dumb writing above it for one. The second thing was that I actually had Imp holding the staff and examining it. I thought this gave it a bit more depth because the other versions seemed to me like he was not allowed to touch it or he was not able to pull it out of the stone. Without him touching the staff it seems odd that The Black Hole would come out to protect it. It seems more likely that if it were removed from its resting place that would cause the chaos that awaits Imp.